The humidity of Hong Kong clung to everything, a thick, gauzy blanket that wrapped around the neon signs of Mong Kok and the serene peaks of Victoria Peak alike. But Pistachio Ng seemed to move through it untouched, a cool, breezy anomaly in the sweltering city. She was as popular as Dubai chocolate—a rare, luxurious indulgence whispered about, desperately desired, and almost mythical in its appeal.
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Her name, a childhood whim that stuck, suited her perfectly. She had eyes the colour of the nut’s inner shell—a pale, knowing green—and a laugh that cracked through the city’s noise like a sudden, delightful surprise. Her beauty wasn't the placid, photoshopped kind; it was an energy, a vibrancy that pulled people into her orbit. And for the boys foolish or fortunate enough to kiss her, that orbit became a gravitational pull from which they never escaped.
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Pistachio didn’t ask for this. She was just a girl who loved her city and her freedom with equal ferocity. While her friends at the University of Hong Kong dreamt of promising careers and diamond rings, Pistachio dreamed of hiking the Dragon's Back at dawn, of finding the perfect dan tat in a hidden dai pai dong, of losing herself in the chaotic poetry of the Sheung Wan antiques market. Romance, with its demands for exclusivity and its endless negotiations of time and space, felt like a cage. And in a city of seven million, where space was the ultimate luxury, the one thing Pistachio refused to compromise was the space within herself.
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The first great casualty of her strange magic was Leo. He was a boy from her secondary school, all nervous energy and floppy hair. Their kiss was a fumbling, sweet affair behind the bleachers after a rugby match. For Pistachio, it was a pleasant, fizzy experiment. For Leo, it was a revelation that rewired his nervous system.
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He became her shadow, his devotion a constant, overwhelming presence. He serenaded her outside her family’s high-rise flat in Quarry Bay, singing off-key Canto-pop until a neighbour emptied a bucket of water on him. For her eighteenth birthday, he presented her with his grandmother’s jade ring, a family heirloom, his hands shaking with a terrifying, absolute certainty. “I will build you a life,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion. Pistachio, horrified by the weight of such a gift, gently refused, and had to change her route to campus for a month to avoid his heartbroken, pleading eyes.
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Then there was Sam. Sweet, practical Sam, who was her best friend for two glorious years. Theirs was an easy, comfortable friendship built on shared lunches in Victoria Park and marathon study sessions in the hushed HKU library. The kiss happened during a typhoon. Trapped in her apartment as the winds howled outside, surrounded by the cozy chaos of board games and half-finished essays, it felt like a natural progression. A game of truth or dare. A moment of warmth.
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For Sam, it was the moment the world realigned. His easy-going camaraderie vanished, replaced by an all-seeing, suffocating attentiveness. He began to track her cycle with a devotion usually reserved for religious observance. One brutal, cramp-ridden afternoon, she mentioned offhandedly that she’d forgotten to buy pads. Within an hour, a rain-soaked Sam was at her door, holding a plastic bag from Watsons containing not one, but four different brands of pads (winged, ultra-night, for maximum security), a hot water bottle shaped like a cartoon pig, a bar of expensive Belgian chocolate, and a packet of Po Chai pills. His kindness was immense, thoughtful, and it felt like a cage made of velvet. She had to let him go, and the loss of his simple, uncomplicated friendship was the first true price of her curse.
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The third, and most artistically devastating, was Elias. He was a painter from Paris, teaching a workshop at the Asia Society. He was older, sophisticated, and arrogantly aware of her reputation. “Chérie,” he’d said, swirling a glass of red wine at a gallery opening in Central, “I am an artist. I appreciate beauty, I do not succumb to it. Your… provincial boys, they have no discipline.”
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Their first kiss was in his rented studio in Kennedy Town, a space smelling of turpentine, oil paint, and ego. It was not a chaste peck. It was deep, passionate, a meeting of minds and bodies that left Pistachio feeling more exhilarated and seen than she ever had. For a fleeting, dangerous moment, she wondered if the curse was a myth, or if Elias’s European sophistication made him immune.
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He was not.
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Elias didn’t bring her gifts or serenade her. His obsession was his art. He became possessed, a man channeling a divine vision. He painted only her. Canvases piled up against the studio walls: Pistachio as a Lantau Island fisherwoman; Pistachio as a modern-day goddess overlooking the Hong Kong skyline; Pistachio as an abstract explosion of jade green and neon pink. He painted her with a love that was fervent, religious. “You are my muse,” he would whisper, his fingers stained with cobalt and umber. “You are the spirit of this city—fragile yet unbreakable, ancient and utterly modern. You have unlocked the divine in me.”
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It was the most beautiful prison she had ever been offered. To be a muse is to be frozen, perfected, an idea rather than a person. Pistachio was a girl who wanted to get noodle soup on her shirt and swear when she stubbed her toe. She couldn’t be his divine ideal and also be gloriously, messily real. Ending it with Elias was like trying to stop a symphony mid-crescendo. It was violent and loud. He smashed a canvas. He called her his destruction. He painted one final, furious portrait of her as a vengeful dragon queen and then set it ablaze in a metal bin on the street below, the acrid smoke a fitting funeral for his fantasy.
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The whispers in the city grew louder. She was a gum sin, a gold-digging tease. A mou sim, a heartless woman. The other girls in her circle watched her with a mixture of envy and smug pity. The boys looked at her with a new, wary hunger, each one secretly believing he would be the one to tame her.
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Pistachio felt a profound loneliness settle deep in her bones. She was surrounded by the pulsing energy of one of the world’s most densely packed cities, yet she was utterly isolated. Her kisses were like throwing a stone into a pond; the ripples always came back to drown her. She was desired by many but known by none.
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She made a decision. She would become an island. She built walls of cheerful, unshakeable independence. She was the life of every party in Lan Kwai Fong, the best confidante, the most adventurous friend—and a romantic partner to no one. She started dating her city instead. She took the tram to the Peak alone at midnight, the glittering skyline her only companion. She learned to identify every ingredient in a bowl of complex poon choi and spent a summer learning traditional bamboo scaffolding techniques, skills that felt more solid and valuable than any love sonnet. Her life was full, vibrant, and hers.
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But Hong Kong, and its boys, were persistent. A young dai san (tycoon’s son) tried to win her with a key to a luxury apartment in The Peak. A musician wrote a symphony in her name. She rejected them all with a gentle, firm finality that only made the legend of Pistachio Ng grow.
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The true test came during her final year. His name was Ben. He was a geology PhD candidate from Canada, a man more comfortable with the ancient, slow language of rocks than the frantic buzz of human emotion. He was quiet, observant, with a calmness that felt like a cool plunge pool after the city’s heat. He didn’t try to kiss her for months. They were just friends. They hiked Lion Rock together, and he’d point out Jurassic-era volcanic formations while she pointed out the best spots for pineapple buns. He listened to her dreams of travelling the Silk Road not as cute fantasies, but as real, achievable plans.
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And Pistachio, for the first time, felt the terrifying, thrilling pull of wanting to kiss someone. She wanted to know what it would feel like to kiss someone she genuinely, deeply liked, without the spectre of the curse. The desire was a constant hum under her skin. One night, camping in a remote corner of Sai Kung, the moment arrived. The sky was a dizzying spill of stars, unpolluted by the city’s glare. He was pointing out the constellation of the Big Dipper, and she was looking at the steady certainty of his profile in the dim light, and she leaned in.
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He met her halfway.
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The kiss was everything. It was warm and steady and deep, like the granite bedrock of the island. And for one glorious, heart-stopping moment, it was just a kiss. Two people, under the infinite sky, connected.
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Then she felt it. The subtle shift. The tension in his hands as they came up to frame her face. The slight, imperceptible catch in his breath. She pulled away, her heart hammering not with passion, but with a familiar, devastating dread.
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Ben’s eyes, when they opened, were full of starlight. But it was a starlight she had put there. He looked at her with a wonder that was already curdling into something more desperate, more possessive.
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“Pistachio,” he breathed, and her name was a prayer on his lips.
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“No,” she whispered, scrambling back on the blanket, the cold of the earth seeping through. “No, no, no. Not you. Please, not you.”
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The confusion on his face was worse than the immediate devotion. “Not me what? What’s wrong?”
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“You’ll fall in love with me now,” she said, the words tasting of ash and bitter irony. “Everyone does. It’s what happens. It’s my… thing.”
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He stared at her, the geologist presented with an impossible, unscientific phenomenon. He shook his head, a slow, stubborn denial. “That’s not how it works. What I feel… this is real. It’s been building for months.”
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But she could see it. The seed had been planted. The unwanted alchemy was already working its cruel magic. The gentle, equal footing of their friendship was tilting, and she was being placed back on that damned pedestal.
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She left him there, among the ancient, silent rocks, and hitched a ride back to the city with a group of morning hikers. It was her lowest point. Her curse had taken the one thing she had truly wanted: a best friend she could have maybe, possibly, loved without destroying.
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For weeks, she was a ghost in her own city. She ignored Ben’s calls, his letters, his increasingly desperate texts that evolved from confused to loving to bitterly resigned. She finally sent him one final message: I am so sorry. It’s not you. It’s literally me. Please be well. She blocked his number.
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She had to make a choice. She could continue to be a passive victim of this strange power, letting it ruin every meaningful connection, or she could take ownership of it. She chose the latter.
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Pistachio Ng, the girl who was as popular as Dubai chocolate, went celibate. Not with a vow, but with a fierce, protective selfishness. Her lips became a fortified border. Her affection was poured liberally into her friends, her family, her studies, and her own adventurous life. She learned that a tight hug, a hand held in solidarity during a protest march, a shared umbrella in a sudden downpour—these things were safe. They built bridges, not prisons.
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She never did explain it to anyone else. It became just one of those things about Pistachio. She’s amazing, but she doesn’t date. She doesn’t kiss. She’s married to her freedom.
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Years later, at a rooftop bar in Sheung Wan, a young banker, new to the city and already enchanted by her, asked her friend about the vibrant woman laughing by the railing, her gaze fixed on the Star Ferry crossing the dark, glittering water.
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“That’s Pistachio Ng,” her friend said with a fond smile. “Forget it. She’s not available.”
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“Oh, she’s with someone?”
“No,” the friend said, watching as Pistachio turned her face into the breeze, a look of serene contentment in her pistachio-green eyes, utterly and completely her own. “She’s with her city. And that’s more than enough for her.”
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And it was. Her love affair was with the neon-drenched streets, the misty peaks, the steaming baskets of dim sum, and the boundless, terrifying, exhilarating freedom to be exactly who she was. It was the only relationship that had never asked her to change, and the only one that never would.
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and then Add to home screen.